NEW ORLEANS - On Bourbon Street, stout men in narrow-brimmed hats strummed loud music from bars on opposite sides of the street, battling for the attention of passersby. Neatly dressed touts fanned out from strip-club doors, urging men to step within, smiling with well-oiled cheer. I snapped a photo of a woman in one doorway who appeared to be clad in little more below the waist than a strategically placed patch, and as I walked on, a young man followed me, calling out, "Hey, I saw you taking the picture. You want to hook up with any of them?"

Warren Harding died here" doesn't quite have the tourist draw of "Washington slept here," but for the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, the distinction of being the only hotel where a president of the United States drew his last breath is enough to put it...

HAWI, Hawaii - You don't get to North Kohala unless you mean to, or you've made a wrong turn.
All the better for local musicians and artists to hide away and find their Polynesian muses.
This lush district at the Big Island of Hawaii's north shore is...

NEW ORLEANS - Marine Lt. Leonard Isaaks Jr. was killed on Feb. 20, 1945, during the battle for the Japanese island Iwo Jima. All you really need to know about his death is contained in the painstakingly printed letter found on his body:
Dear Daddy,...

EPHRAIM, Wis. — As the sun sets in a blaze of color over the waters of Green Bay, a few hundred visitors to Peninsula State Park intentionally miss the sight.
They're only a couple of miles from the shoreline, but their eyes are focused on...

Begun in 1819, Ft. Snelling at the time was the remotest military outpost on the American frontier. (Now it's just a mile from the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport.) It was built to protect U.S. interests (read: fur trade) in this corner of the Louisiana Purchase and to keep peace among the region's Native American peoples even as the federal government laid claim to their lands. The fort did its job, but not without controversy: The slave Dred Scott based his bid for freedom on time spent here, and after the...

"What happened last night?" — a line from the hit 2009 film "The Hangover."
LAS VEGAS — As the characters in the quintessential guys-bonding-in-Vegas movie "The Hangover" discovered, Sin City offers a multitude of grown-up escapes that could be rated Triple-D.
Drinking, debauchery and decadence aren't hard to find in the city that bills itself as the "entertainment capital of the world." But a testosterone-injected trip to Las Vegas needn't include any overindulgences that are difficult to...

BOSTON — Major, sudden and tragic events create indelible images, mental snapshots that enable people, decades later, to recall where they were when they heard the news: the Sept. 11 attacks; the deaths of John Lennon and Diana, Princess of Wales; Pearl Harbor.
And, of course, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Nov. 22 begins the one-year countdown to the 50th anniversary of the tragedy in Dallas' Dealey Plaza. Millions of people, here and abroad, will recall the unexpected, violent...

A disaster-prone Texas tourist destination that for more than a century has been an on-again, off-again home to oceanfront amusements will once again lure thrill-seekers with roller coasters, midway games and carnival confections.
PHOTOS: New rides at Galveston Island Historic Pleasure Pier
The $60-million Galveston Island Historic Pleasure Pier plans to open in May with 16 rides, including a vertical-lift steel coaster, a 100-foot-tall Ferris wheel with programmable LED lights and a 200-foot-tall swing...

What's it like to live in a far-off place most of us see only on a vacation? Foreign Correspondence is an interview with someone who lives in a spot you may want to visit.
Florian Schulz, 36, is from an area near the Alps in southern Germany, but his passion as a photographer and explorer is the top of the world. He is the author of "To the Arctic" ($45; Mountaineers Books), published in November. It is a companion hardcover to a new IMAX documentary of the same name.
Q: Where all have you been in the...

BUDAPEST, Hungary —American coffeehouses are prized for their quick service and fast Internet — ideal for people on the go. But a century ago, European cafes were places to linger amid Gilded Age opulence. Nowhere was this more so than in Budapest, where some of its great historic cafes have survived economic crises, war and Communism.
My wife, Rachel, and my mother-in-law, Edie, had never been to Hungary, but they had been hearing about Budapest and its grand avenues, delicious pastries...

SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine - For a place scripted for a starring role in the end of the world, Balaklava Bay puts on a pretty face.
With its string of seafood restaurants and cafes along the waterfront looking out at prim sailboats and humming powerboats cutting across the water, there's no hint of Götterdämmerung. That is, until your eye catches a dark spot on Tavros Mountain across the way. A concrete lip frames a large hole that water flows to and disappears into the dark.
From here, the Soviet Union...